, little understandings which he had
attributed to nothing more than longer acquaintance. It suddenly
occurred to him that she had helped nurse him when he was ill. And it
came to him that he had given little thought to the days when Terry
had fought off death, had been heedless of what those days must have
been when Terry looked from the mountain deep into the valley of the
shadow, he groaned aloud.

He shook his head, miserably: "Here I've been, mooning around like
a--like a--and left him to do all the worrying--all the planning! Last
night I slept while he--" He cursed himself for a fatuous fool.

When he rose, the bitterness of spirit had left him, and his sacrifice
had been made, but his lips were white with suffering.

As he neared the village his course took him about the base of the
crag, and as he rounded the western side he heard the murmur of
subdued voices. He slowed and approached cautiously. A jutting
buttress of rock masked the talkers until he was almost upon them, and
as he turned this corner he halted in a wretched pang of the jealousy
he thought he had subdued.

Terry and Ahma sat on a bench of rock, their backs to him, unaware of
his presence. Terry's trim head was bent forward as if he studied the
western horizon; she leaned against him in gentle contact of firm
white shoulder.

For a moment the Major's heart thumped painfully, then the confusion
of the unwitting eavesdropper compelled him to make his presence
known. He did so with that fine discrimination and artful delicacy he
summoned in times of emotional stress.

"Hello," he said.

Both turned, and rose, unembarrassed. Terry's welcome shone in his
face, and Ahma was radiant with a quick emotion which, true to the
traditions of those among whom she had been reared, she made no effort
to dissemble or restrain. The Major dropped his eyes before the gaze,
noting, dully, how wind and sun had faintly tanned the neck and
shoulders and limbs. Sun and wind were patent, too, in the vigor and
elasticity of the slim, loose clad form.

"I'm teaching her English, Major," Terry said.

For a moment she maintained her searching of the Major's averted eyes,
then spoke a word to Terry and turned to go. A few steps took her to
the buttress, where she stopped and turned her eyes full upon the
Major, and spoke in English, teasingly:

"Hello, sir."

The Major answered in a voice that sounded harsh in his own ears and
watched her disappear around the co